


Imperative

by frangipani



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bodily Fluids, Body Horror, Crapsack World, Dark, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Mating Cycles/In Heat, biopolitics, imperial ideology, myrkr helltrek, not a hero's narrative, oh no frangi's back on her bullshit, omegaverse elements, wait more like she never left it, when i say alternate universe i mean alternate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-16 03:57:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18086978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/pseuds/frangipani
Summary: Only animals have heat cycles.





	Imperative

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This contains racist ideology AND rape. You know where the back button is.
> 
> I'm of two minds about linking people to this perversity but [strangeallure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeallure/pseuds/strangeallure) and [evilmouse]() were both instrumental in helping this make sense.

Skywalker was looking at the lightsaber again.

He wasn’t obvious, sneaking just a sliver of a look, her slightest movement made it scoot away. From her seat by a tree several meters away on the other side of the worklight, her blaster in her lap, Mara dared at him to make a try for it. 

Skywalker didn’t seem inclined to do more than glance. His fingers tapped ceaselessly on his knees from where he sat cross legged on his bedroll. Turning in a jerky motion, he picked up his ration bar from where he’d left it, gave it a small bite. He put it back down and resumed the tapping, surveying the darkened forest before him.

The lightsaber on Mara’s belt was his, but that was a technicality now. At least for the duration of this blasted trek. Past that, if she had her way the lightsaber's ownership would be a moot point.

Mara finished her own ration bar in sullen silence. Three days to civilization on a sprained ankle, all because Skywalker had decided to be an idiot and try to make a run from Karrde’s compound. She should have given him a blaster bolt between the eyes, not a bedroll and ration bar.

In fact, she still should. His escape had only proven what she knew, that he was absolutely not meant to be trusted. He was a Force sensitive after all. A Jedi.

He stood up and Mara raised her blaster automatically. “Where you going?” 

Skywalker’s artoo unit let out a long string of alarmed-sounding binary.

“Take it easy.” Skywalker lifted his hand, putting it on the artoo unit’s dome and Mara wasn't exactly sure who he was speaking to. “Just stretching my legs.”

With more than a bit of reluctance, Mara brought her blaster back down to her lap. She needed Skywalker's droid to contact Karrde. However she wanted to, this was not the time to rid herself of him.

Skywalker plodded a tight path along the edge of the camp. Even from where Mara was sitting she could see the tightness in his shoulders as he peered about the trees. He wouldn’t see anything or feel anything through the Force either. Not on this Force-forsaken planet. It was almost certainly new to him, not having the Force as backup, being truly on his own. That would make it easier to dispose of him once he'd outlived his use.

Skywalker returned, and sat down in the same spot. A beat later he was back to restlessly tapping his fingers on his knees. He paused to pick up the ration bar, then put it back down without taking a bite. More than half of it was left.

“The forest sounds so loud,” he said, wincing. “Maybe we should keep walking. You mentioned the predators here are nocturnal. We’d be aware enough to protect ourselves.”

Ah, so the great Jedi was jumpy. “Not worth it. We’d be too visible when we inevitably have to cross the clearings.” 

“Right, they’d be able to see the glowrods from above.” He stood up again. 

She was having a bad enough day without this ants-in-his-pants shavit. 

“Sit the kriff down.” Mara lifted the blaster for emphasis. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

Frowning, he complied, but didn’t answer.

Skywalker’s droid started trilling and swaying side to side. He jumped up and Mara lifted a glowrod to see a vronskr approaching, claws sinking into the ground, tail rigid behind it. 

The vronskr stalked forward towards Skywalker, lifted its head to sniff, barely aware of the worklight illuminating its path, completely focused on Skywalker. It cautiously darted back, ready to strike--

Mara shot it dead.

She lowered her blaster, and lifted her glowrod to make sure there weren’t anymore like it out there. 

“Thank you,” Skywalker murmured.

“Forget it.” Mara balled her ration bar wrapper and couldn’t restrain a sneer. Skywalker had mentioned how useful his droid would be. “Good thing we have your droid along, huh?”

Skywalker didn't take the bait. He sat down on his bedroll, laying back on it, probably trying for sleep. A few seconds later Mara heard him shift to his side, his back to her. Her fingers twitched atop the blaster, but she stayed, listening to the sounds of the night forest. He moved again, a rustling sound as he curled on his other side and Mara jolted up. A few seconds of tranquility made her consider relaxing, until he shifted again.

Mara ground her teeth together. Great.

Rationally, she knew more likely than not Skywalker was jumpy because he had good reason to be. Here he was without the Force here, unarmed, in a forest full of predators -- one of which had nearly attacked him. His only help was her, who wanted him dead. Anyone would be nervous. Just what happens when your back’s against the wall.

But that was also when the enemy was at their most dangerous. And someone like him doubly so.

Mara reached for her survival kit and dug for the tube of stim pills. She retrieved one and downed it with a swig from her water canteen. 

Three days. 

She would be on her guard for all of them.

\--

Skywalker had actually sat up a couple of times that night between tosses and turns on his bedroll. He’d turned his head to see Mara in the same sitting position she’d been, her blaster trained on him. 

She'd had the worklight at a low setting so she hadn't seen his expression only his profile in shadow, the straight nose, jawline set as he'd scanned one side of the camp, then the other. She'd thought, I won't be deceived. Both times he’d simply laid back down. Once the sky lightened, Mara packed up her things and reached for another ration bar. 

As she ate it, she watched Skywalker pick up his bedroll. She didn't think he’d finished his ration bar last night, but it didn't matter as long as he could keep up.

Mara stood and tested her ankle. It still twinged, and she cursed under her breath. Of all the moments to get a karking sprain. It’d been his fault. She glared at the back of Skywalker’s head as he settled the droid on the travois making idiotic small talk with it in a tone that sounded weary but upbeat.

They set off not much after, covering a surprising amount of forest even with Skywalker’s exhaustion, the droid on its makeshift travois, and Mara’s sprained ankle, and managed to send off the sonde balloon.

By evening their pace, particularly Skywalker’s, had begun to slow down. It didn’t surprise Mara; she thought he might have only had the leftover half of the ration bar for lunch and nothing else. 

The gleam of the worklight painted his face drawn and pale. He wrung his hands, them rubbed down his pants, for all appearances as jittery as the previous night. 

Mara leaned back against her tree, blaster in lap, and didn't see a reason for it. The message they’d seen from Karrde meant Skywalker could count on her not blasting him for the duration of their trek. She pressed her lips into a line. It couldn't be her he was so concerned about.

Was it the vronskr attacks? She’d had to shoot three of the wolf-like creatures who’d gone for Skywalker today, the last shortly after sundown. Vronskrs didn't faze her. When she'd first arrived at Myrkr, she'd trained herself in recognizing their sounds and taking them down. The vronskrs had been after Skywalker; regardless of the ysalamiri’s bubble they’d recognize that, having the Force, he was their prey. Their single-minded focus on him made them easy to kill. 

But Skywalker hadn’t seemed worried when he'd been confronted by Karrde's vronskrs just a day ago. He'd been surprisingly even-keeled about everything, about being stunned then drugged, about being dragged to an unknown planet. The lack of the Force hadn’t seemed to disturb him that much either, not even after Karrde had hesitated making a decision on what to do with him.

“I wish you’d let me have my lightsaber back,” Skywalker interrupted her thoughts. 

Mara felt her face pinch. They’d gone through this earlier. Again she damned Karrde for telling Solo and Calrissian about Skywalker. He’d been hers to dispose of. “Keep dreaming.”

“Can’t be fun shooting all those vronskrs off me.”

She flashed him a humorless smile. “Fun is relative.”

He exhaled, forcibly loosening his shoulders. A few moments of silence passed before he added, “You didn’t sleep at all last night and--”

Her smile vanished. “That’s none of your concern. Worry about yourself.”

“I’m worried about _all_ of us,” he retorted, and Mara found herself leaning back at the sharpness of his tone. He continued more evenly, “Your ankle--”

Kriff if she wasn’t going to match it. Her ankle was much better. Nearly healed, in fact. “I said it’s none of your concern.”

He looked at her fixedly for a moment but said nothing. Instead, he brought his arms around himself, as if he were cold, though the night didn’t seem cold to Mara. She went to her survival kit for a ration bar. Was he sick? 

She examined him as she went back to her bedroll. His face was glistening with sweat. It’d been like that since this morning, come to think of it. He laid back on the bedroll while she ate her bar. 

If he were sick, he’d be an even bigger problem. 

She jutted her chin forward. “What’s wrong with you?” 

He rolled to his side, a muffled “Nothing” rising up.

“You just make sure you don’t slow me down,” she hissed, going to her kit. “Because if you do--”

Skywalker’s droid gave a high-pitched trill, and Mara turned, blaster raised, hearing a familiar crackle-purr.

Something heavy landed on her, tossing her down on the leaf-littered ground before she could aim her blaster. One second the artoo unit was making a ruckus, and in the next second stinging pain made her cry out. She thought she heard Skywalker yell something. She wanted to turn over, but the animal -- vronskr -- her mind supplied, was too heavy. Its claws raked over her skin, sharp screams in her ears. Her own. A searing tear --

The weight was gone, but there was a hot lancing through her back. Mara only heard herself breathe, a low whimper caught in her throat.

“Mara.”

She jerked at the sound of her name with another cry at the pain scalding across her back. Skywalker was in front of her; he had a bleeding gash in his forehead. He leaned forward as if to help her up but narrowly stopped himself. Behind him she saw the headless carcass of the downed vronskr.

“You’re hurt.” As close as he was, it sounded like he was far away. She tried to blink away the lightheadedness. “Slashes at your back. You need to disinfect...Mara? Mara?” 

With slow deliberate movements and shallow breaths against the blaring, scalding pain, she forced herself up to a sitting position. She breathed out in short gasps as the least movement brought a fresh wave of agony down her back. 

He had the lightsaber. 

She tried to get her breathing under control, felt her face squeezing with effort.

Skywalker lifted his head, eyes scanning over her shoulders. “We need to check how bad it is.”

He had the lightsaber. She couldn't let him -- her fingers twitched. Her blaster. Where was it?

Skywalker had stood, and she saw him go to the survival kit. Mara breathed through the pain, trying to both force herself to move and control a whimper that squeezed the base of her throat. He drew out purifier, gauze, bacta salve and approached her. 

She gritted her teeth. “Get-away from me.”

He stopped. “You can’t reach all the slashes,” he said flatly.

Her blaster. She continued scanning over the throbbing of her back. Where was her blaster?

She sniffed and turned her head, smelling her own blood, the throb at her back making it difficult to concentrate. There. Her blaster was only a few feet from her under some leaves. Her gaze flicked to Skywalker. He stood in the same place, the salve and bandage in his hands, lightsaber clipped to his belt. Mara closed her fist. He'd taken the lightsaber. Pain made her sluggish. She almost expected a _snap-hiss_ as she threw herself forward for her blaster with a wrenching cry.

Her fingers closed around it, her back throbbing as she forced herself to aim it up, despite the shake in her hands.

Skywalker was in the same spot, the supplies still in hand. “We have tomorrow and the next day before we’re out of the forest. If it gets infected, you’ll be in trouble.”

Mara extended her free hand, opened her palm. Not a bluff, she told herself. She would shoot him right there if he balked. Her first bolt might not hit true, but she wouldn't keep missing. She wouldn't. This was too important. “The lightsaber.”

“I'm not--” His shoulders slouched down as he stopped. He unclipped the lightsaber from his belt, bending to offer it to her. Mara reached forward and yanked it back to her lap, biting on a scream as her back protested the motion. 

She kept her eyes on him, hating that the way he was looking at her, as if she were some small, damaged thing. It was the last thing she needed now with that throbbing at her back. Mara passed him a dark look. She might be wounded, but she still held her blaster. She could still use it. 

"You'll feel better with numbing salve," he said.

Grudgingly, she waited a few beats before slowly lowering her blaster. With tentative steps, Skywalker circled back, disappearing from her line of vision. She heard the shuffle of his feet as he sat behind her, an ensuing sharp intake of breath at whatever he saw. She stiffened as he stood back up. Easy prey. She was easy prey. 

“I’m getting the tweezers and shears,” he announced. "There's a lot of...torn cloth."

She would move away, she thought. She had to. She would.

But it hurt too much. Mara watched him through the murk of pain. He slid some of the sterile gloves from the kit on and went back to the wound. The medi-shear's _snip-snip_ seemed loud to her ears.

She should move away. 

“You hate me,” he mused. "But I’ve never even seen you before."

Mara closed her eyes. No, the last of the Jedi wouldn’t possibly remember the likes of her. She'd been just another skin piece at Jabba's. Why would he?

She felt the sting of the purifier next, and forced herself to be absolutely silent, not move an inch despite the piercing pain.

“What did I do to you?” It’s not often the question sounded this bland, as if it were a simple request for information.

Kriff him anyway. She didn't owe him any kriffing explanations.

Skywalker worked in silence for a few moments before venturing, “The obvious answer is that you’re an Imperial and you--”

“You took my _life_.” She hated how thin her voice sounded. “I was the Emperor’s Hand. His personal agent. I had everything through him. He’d _given_ me everything. And you killed him. ”

He stopped, but didn't reply for several beats then: “I didn’t take your life.”

She jerked around, stifling a cry at the pain in her back when she did.

His gloved hands held the blood-soaked gauze. “You’re right here.” His expression had a fool's sincerity, blue eyes solemn. Beads of sweat had gathered on his temples, the worklight catching on them. He leaned slightly forward, as if he'd glimpsed something in her face. Mara quickly turned around.

She had the horrific urge to let her head fall to her hands, an ache flaming up just under her collarbone, more rending that even the pain at her back. She’d had everything once, before her life was about running. How long before it went back to running again?

Instead, she exhaled slowly. It’d been a mistake to say anything. And maybe Skywalker had known. Maybe he’d asked on purpose to get her even more off balance. 

Force sensitives only _looked_ normal, Mara reminded herself. Liars. All of them. She opened and closing her trembling hands. She wouldn't be deceived. Her hand closed once again on the lightsaber. 

It took three tries before Mara was able to clip it back onto her belt.

\--

Hours later, Mara had changed into her spare tunic and sat awake. She’d disposed of her torn tunic, but she could still smell her own blood in the air. Between that and the ruckus of the night forest, her heart hadn’t stopped pounding. The numbing cream had worked its magic, but the remaining tenderness at her back only added to the whirl of her thoughts. She wanted to stand up, pace, reorder her things, do _something_ about the rush of adrenaline that kept her on edge, but given the state of her back, it wasn’t a good idea.

Just the second night of stim pills and she had already been negligent. If Skywalker wanted to get away, if he wanted to grab his lightsaber from her, he could with impunity. That sense of vigilance hadn’t done much for her.

A rustle, and Mara’s eye darted in his direction. Skywalker had been sleeping as fitfully as last night. He’d missed an excellent opportunity to escape after the vronskr attacked her. Obviously he was completely sold on Karrde’s plan. 

She should be happy. It was at least some sort of plan. But why had Karrde told Solo and Calrissian? She’d waited too long.

Skywalker was an unregulated Force sensitive, exceedingly dangerous. He'd killed her master. She _couldn’t_ allow him to escape again.

Another rustle as Skywalker turned to his other side. After he’d finished treating the wound and bandaging her up, his restlessness had been back, and she hadn’t seen him take the ration bar out. He wasn’t well, that was for certain, and something else nagged. Something she couldn’t put her finger on.

A soft groan broke through her thoughts. Skywalker shifted to his other side. She furrowed her brow as he rolled to his side yet again. A few beats later he sat up, breathing hard, the worklight’s play of grays and blacks playing off his shoulders. 

And listening to him breathe Mara thought of something else that had been nagging at her since earlier, the answer found in a memory of more than five years ago. Skywalker was definitely sick. Of course he was. Because the ysalamiri meant he couldn’t access the Force, and as much as the Force led to mutation, it was also used to curb what went with it. It should have been obvious to her from the beginning.

Skywalker was heatsick.

\--

Special talents came at a price, her master had once told her. It was a fact for those who had the Force. Suppression techniques were par for the course, a way to rise above the Force’s unchecked exigencies.

Mara had been twenty when she’d experienced her first and only heat. It had barely lasted two days. She’d been confined to her quarters, in some kind of torturous delirium when a man--maybe a couple of years older than her--knocked on her door. 

After, she'd woken up sore, sticky, atop soaked sheets. It’d been filthy; she’d been alarmed what she’d manifested was some sort of illness and that she’d soiled herself. But it hadn’t been that. The bed smelled like her, and faintly of sex, and she'd had vivid memories of an urge so sharp it may as well have been a compulsion. 

Alone, thankfully, she’d rushed to shower, but couldn't quite erase the echo of that craving shooting through her, the squeeze of her body around the man's -- not an orgasm, she knew those. No, it’d been something weirder, some kind of hard tension in her pelvic muscles to keep him there, inside her. She’d remembered having an instinctual knowledge that it wouldn't go away until the craving, the heat did.

Later it dawned on her that the man had been sent -- he'd obviously known what to expect because he didn't try to get away, though in retrospect he hadn't seemed enthusiastic at all. How could he with that much mess, those abnormal impulses? He'd tolerated it, and she shouldn’t have cared.

Her master had taught her the technique to suppress the heat cycle the next day, claiming it had been a necessary learning experience for one to whom he'd granted his power. It wouldn’t happen to her again. She’d realized that the Force wasn’t simply about what she could do, but something deeper, a change down to her cells, her very body. It’d opened a susceptibility to impulse to which she’d have to be ever-vigilant.

The knowledge of what the Force had done to her body hadn't seemed like much to pay for all the prestige her master offered her, for the glory of his empire. She would have chosen to be this way herself for him. She would always choose her master.

Then Skywalker killed him. Her abilities with the Force went with him, along with all the aberrant impulses. Just as well. She was back to what she'd originally been. Human.

Skywalker sat up slightly. She thought his eyes might be on her, but his profile was too dark to really tell. Scuffling noises rose up as tried to lay back down, loud even in the racket of the forest.

Mara didn’t miss the Force. She’d had a few times in the five years after her master’s death where she’d woken up at night, both too cold and too hot, her skin feeling stretched and uncomfortable on her, symptoms that had been nothing compared to that wracking fever of that first heat, that weakness in her limbs accompanied by an intolerable unsettledness at the pit of her stomach. Once she’d joined Karrde’s organization here on Myrkr, it’d been completely gone. It had only been stress.

Another rustle from Skywalker’s bedroll. 

Should she say anything? Mara decided against it. 

A low muffled groan. She thought he might be curled in on himself.

As long as he handled it enough to get out of here, it was none of her business. She remembered it being agonizing, but had never thought it was fatal, and it hadn't turned into desire until she'd touched someone. Mara closed her eyes, making herself stay in the present. Skywalker had put gloves on to work on her back. Maybe he'd known what was good for him.

She’d have no problems shooting him if he forgot.

\--

Skywalker looked considerably worse at sunup, red-eyed, his hands shaking as he went to latch his droid to the travois. Mara wanted to derive pleasure from it, but all it brought was a slew of bad memories. 

He'd skipped a ration bar in the morning and at noon. She’d once read heats suppressed an animal’s metabolism, obviating the desire for food. From her memories, heatsickness didn’t really feel like sexual desire for most of it; the fever, the body pain, all of it felt like an illness, one with an accompanying restlessness, a buzzing under one’s skin, even after days of not sleeping. It was touch that threw everything into overdrive.

She didn’t miss the Force at all. 

Mara tried not to think about the palace companion, her fingers closing around his wrist in a death grip, her other hand at his collar. She didn't remember what he'd looked like, but he’d smelled wonderful to her. She’d wanted to rub him onto her skin, needed it, thought she’d die if she couldn’t. 

Her hand tightened on her blaster.

Skywalker stumbled with the travois over uneven ground, the droid slipping off. He lurched over to it, moving as if his bones hurt, a jarring contrast to his previous grace. An uncanny, inhuman grace.

By her estimation he was further along than she’d gotten before consummation had brought it to a stop. If a heat cycle ran for three to four days, he would been hitting its peak. But it was all conjecture. She’d been too ashamed of her heat to ask her master any specific questions, and unlike her, Skywalker was born a Force sensitive. 

Who knew how heat cycles worked for them.

\--

“When you said Emperor’s Hand,” Skywalker broke the usual silence that afternoon. Even his voice sounded different, strained. It’d started drizzling which hadn’t helped Mara’s mood any. The droplets mixed with her sweat, making her tunic cling uncomfortably to her skin. Skywalker hadn’t been doing much better, his hair darkened and plastered down his nape. They had just stopped for rest. “What did you mean?”

Mara ignored him as she went through her kit for a ration bar. 

“That like,” he took one swig from his canteen as if he were forcing himself, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Looking at the canteen made her want to run her tongue along the rim of its wet mouth. Mara blinked and got her own out. “ISB?”

“No,” her answer was immediate and sharp. The Imperial Security Bureau was loathed even by other Imperials, even at the Empire’s zenith. Opportunists, all of them. “Nothing like ISB.” She took a swig of her water.

“Then…You’ve used a lightsaber before,” he continued, his eyes sliding down neck down to where she gripped the canteen before they cut away. “Though the way you’ve used it doesn’t tell me much.”

Was that a heat thing? She made a face. “Keep your speculation to yourself, Jedi.”

“If you were Force sensitive you’d be…” he fumbled a bit. 

She stopped. “I’d be heatsick,” she finished bluntly. “The way you are right now.”

Red crept up his face.

It'd been a negligible price to pay for serving her master, she told herself. For purpose. 

And Skywalker had killed him. Mara felt the anger flare anew.

Mara lifted her chin. “My master told me about your kind. Everything he knew, I know.”

That the Force can be controlled by few. Once it was controlled by Jedi, who enforced celibacy because they knew that heat cycles turned sentient beings into animals. All that Jedi high mindedness was just gloss, lies to cover who they really were.

“The populace thinks that the Jedi betrayed the Republic. Turned on themselves when they were most needed,” her master had told her, “and they did. But it began simply, and almost predictably, from a heat cycle.” 

“If one lone Jedi,” her master had continued, “so trained in the ways of the Force could wreck so much damage on his own kind when denied, only imagine what they could have done to the populace. Celibacy is not enough. The Force is not enough. That is why our Inquisitorious was necessary, child. We cannot allow unregulated issue to threaten our people.”

Only her master had been enough.

Skywalker’s expression grew guarded. “My kind?"

"Jedi," she practically spat. Force sensitives, but the Jedi were the worst of the lot with their hypocrisy. "You think you’re above everyone."

Skywalker tilted his head with a frown.

At one point she’d relished the people who’d called her a freak. When she’d had the authority of the Emperor. It hadn’t felt the same after, but she was different from those like Skywalker, not subject to vestigial impulses. The fact that he was alive still was a testament to just how different. Humans were thinking creatures through and through.

She leaned towards him. “When you’re just unregulated issue destabilizing the galaxy.”

His face darkened immediately. “ _The Empire_ has destabilized the galaxy.” He gestured around them, stepping towards her, face still flushed, but no longer with embarrassment. “And your master--”

“Not a word.” She stood up, advancing further, her index finger inches from his nose, her pulse pounding relentlessly in her ears. “Not a kriffing word, murderer.” 

Skywalker looked as if he would snap a reply, his face twisting into a scowl with a twitch of his nose.

Mara lowered her voice, a kind of livewire anticipation so edged it bordered pain running through her. “I will shoot you right here, so help me. I’ve been dreaming about it for years. Test me, Jedi. Go on.” 

A muscle his cheek flexed. “I am not,” he said deliberately, blue eyes sharp, his jaw hard, “unregulated issue any more than you are. Any more than anyone is.” 

She breathed in over impulse to raise her blaster. It didn’t help. The forest was dizzying around her, its damp and musky scent increasing that tension at the base of her spine.

An insolent glint in his eyes was testing her. Mara clenched her fists. His friends would want answers, she told herself. Karrde would be caught between the Imperials and the New Republic. 

Skywalker knew it too. His tone eased away from contentious to something close to petulance. “With talk like that it’s a wonder you’re not working for the Imperials.” He drew a couple of paces away from her. His back was to her and he rolled his shoulders as if trying to work the stiffness off. 

Mara ground her teeth. Was he doubting her loyalty to Karrde? “Please. Whatever’s left is nothing.” 

He didn’t reply, only exhaled loudly a few times. She glared at him. Vaunted Jedi. Like they didn’t sweat or bleed like everyone else, but she was certain if she touched his tunic it’d be wet with sweat. It molded to his back like it was.

Mara resumed walking.

\--

That night Mara’s skin alternated between clammy and hot. She could smell herself, the pungent odor of sweat like a cloud around her. Her tunic was still clinging to her uncomfortably, too rough against her skin. She should be used to it.

Mara thought she could hear Skywalker’s shaky breathing, even through the ululating cries and rambunctious chittering of the night forest. He must have paced around the camp for hours. She didn’t know for sure, her sense of time had grown hazy since the sun had set. 

She shook her head to clear it, but it didn’t work. Her thoughts felt too jumbled. It was only the third night she hadn’t slept. Years before, she’d done missions where she’d gone for days without sleeping and remembered herself sharper than this. She'd grown too comfortable in the last six months.

Skywalker returned to the bedroll. She could predict it now, he’d roll to his left, then his right. He’d sit up, rub his arms. Mara wished she could close her senses to that. It brought back too many memories of that weird restlessness in her blood, the world too bright, too loud, too fragrant.

Skywalker stood up again and started rolling his bedroll away.

“What is it now?” she snarled. 

“Too bright near the light,” he replied tersely as he settled down at the furthest point from her he could get to within the camp.

Mara looked at the worklight. The light was at a low setting and he hadn’t had an issue with it the previous night. Maybe those like him grew even more sensitive to light as their heat cycle progressed. 

Try as she might, she couldn’t stop the memories from surfacing. She recalled with discomfiting clarity the sheer relief at the palace companion’s touch, the way it had felt like that first breath of air after being underwater, or worse yet, the dizzying rearrangement of her awareness towards him. All of that sense of physical deficiency had vanished -- the feeling that she was sick, not working right -- replaced instead by a litany of base compulsions _myhandsonyoumymouthonyouhaveyouinsidemestay_ \--

She felt her face color at the memory, her insides freezing even all these years later. He hadn’t wanted her. It’d been obvious in a physical way, and she hadn’t even cared, just wrapped around him, taken what she needed in some kind of lust fugue, where nothing else mattered. It’d been freakish. Horrible. Utterly unavoidable.

She’d remembered everything after. 

Her master had told her she’d had to know a heat to understand why it needed to be suppressed, to understand why those strong with the Force, whether they’d been born with it or gifted it, had to be watched over and guided. And why he, so long past the realm of instincts, should be the one to do it. He was different.

He had been.

She wrapped her arms around herself, fighting off the evening chill, and hating Skywalker even more.

\--

The morning brought more of the same, but Skywalker, she noted, reached for a ration bar for the first time in a day? Two? Mara had lost track. She couldn’t manage to stomach her own, but that was fine. The stupid stim pills were doing a number on her system, but they were nearing the city. She woudn’t have to continue like this for long. She just had to hold on for a little bit longer.

A couple of times she tripped and nearly fell, catching herself just in time, her eyes darting out by habit to see if Skywalker had caught her clumsiness. He hadn’t noticed, his gaze a murky blue, unmoored. Through the gauzy quality of her thoughts she thought surely he had to be coming out of his heat.

But Mara was tired of thinking about heat cycles. She wanted to be done with all of it. Get rid of Skywalker and push all her bad memories away. She’d begun to regret ever happening on his X-wing. Should have left him in the vacuum of space. If this didn't work...if Karrde decided she was too much trouble...if the Imperials decided to grab Karrde...

She'd have to go back to running.

The air felt muggier than usual around her, fabric of her tunic drenched with her sweat. She looked up, but there was no indication that it would rain. Occasionally she heard the whine of a speeder in the distance. She had to concentrate.

“We’re getting close,” she leaned over to whisper to Skywalker, eyes on the track of sweat drops down the muscle of his neck. She jerked her eyes away and towards the area between the trees. “Outskirts of Hyllyard City.”

He stopped almost looking at her but stopped the motion. “That’s a bike,” he said, voice lowering.

Mara blinked. “What?”

He turned towards her. She felt his breath by her cheek as he replied, “A military model.”

She restrained a shiver, squinted at him, trying to order her thoughts. A bike. A bike. That was important. Slowly she said, “You’re sure.”

He nodded. 

Think, she told herself. The smell of the forest was stronger this morning, like a physical thing hovering just above her skin. Think. Come on.

Something finally came: “If the stormtroopers are there we’re just walking into their arms.”

Skywalker’s eyes darted up, stopped at her mouth, before he stepped away. “I’m going to ask Artoo for a map,” he announced, going to kneel by his droid.

Mara went over to crouch by him to take a look as the holographic map took shape in the air. Skywalker’s eyes flickered to her before he pulled his gaze onto the projected map, gesturing to an area. “Nothing north.”

She managed a thin smile. That was easy even with her head so full of cloth fiber. “Because it’s a trap.”

Skywalker looked at the map for a long moment as if willing himself to concentrate on it. “They’re going to try to surround us. So,” he breathed in, “how do we deal with them?” He inched away from Mara, closer to the map.

The map had started swimming in front of Mara’s vision. She shook her head several times. Those karking pills. Just a little bit longer. She drew closer to the map, her shoulder inches from Skywalker’s.

“We could…just go to them,” he suggested.

Mara rubbed her forehead, resisting an insensate urge to rub it on Skywalker’s sleeve, wiped the sweat of her brow next. “What -- just walk up to them?”

He hesitated, eyes following her hand before elaborating, “A cover. Like Karrde said. There’s no way to avoid them. No way to fight them.” He moved back, beginning to pace. “We switch so they think I’m Jade. It’s not a good idea to take them on how--how we are. That cover is our best option.”

Mara cursed, the haze lifting for a moment. No, they definitely could not take on a regiment of stormtroopers with Skywalker heatsick and with her suffering some imminent stim crash. But to pull off a switch like that seemed unlikely. She turned her gaze onto Skywalker, still pacing beside the artoo unit, shoulders rigid, hair darkened and wet from sweat, his face flushed --

Her breathing hitched just as her stomach knotted. She shouldn’t have taken those pills. Mara swallowed, forced her attention back to the artoo unit.

“Mara?” 

She swiveled her head in Skywalker’s direction. He’d approached and she stood up.

“I’m going to need your blaster to pull that off -- like Karrde said they’ll be less likely to identify us then.”

Every part of her protested, but she wordlessly slipped off her forearm holster and shoved it at him. He took it gingerly.

“They might check if it’s loaded,” he said, lifting his eyes to her.

“No,” she set her jaw, suddenly cold, “You don’t get a loaded weapon.” Especially not with how off base she was feeling. 

“If we get attacked by another vronskr,” his voice pitched testily, “you’re not going to get the power pack to me fast enough.”

“Yeah, maybe I don’t give a shavit,” she raised her voice, edging forward, done with the whole thing, sick of the way her skin itself felt uncomfortable. She wanted to be out of this blasted forest, away from kriffing Skywalker, and this whole fucking mess. She didn't want to keep running. She'd been moving up Karrde's organization. She didn't want to start all over again. She was tired of running and starting all over again.

Skywalked drew a long slow breath. “Maybe you don’t,” he said conciliatory. “Let’s try waiting them out then.”

She closed her eyes. No, they couldn't. Even in this state, she knew the protocol would be to tighten the perimeter more and more. Better to play the hand they had than end with nothing. Mara slipped the power pack off, throwing it at him. It was all his fault.

He almost let it fall, grabbing it at the last minute with fumbling fingers, and went back to his droid. Mara watched as compartment in the droid’s dome opened. “The lightsaber.”

That’s how he’d smuggled in the weapon to Jabba’s, Mara thought, a building chill settling on her. She went over, tossed the lightsaber, the hilt somehow slippery in her hands. The chill was getting worse and she rubbed her arms, feeling gooseflesh break across her skin. When she raised her head she caught Skywalker’s eyes on her, tracking her movement. 

Mara glanced away, biting her lip. The fucking pills. She had to hold on long enough to get back to Karrde. She forced herself to hold her hands loose at either side of her.

“Ready?” he asked.

Her eyes roved over the gash at his forehead, the stubble across his cheeks, the fleshiness of his lower lip. “Your face.”

His lips quirked. “I don’t know where Artoo can hide that.”

“Funny,” she grunted, looking around. “Not hide. Change.” There. She grabbed a couple of leaves from some nearby bushes, careful to keep her fingers on the stems. Darting towards him, she sought to brush them against his face, but he evaded them.

“What--”

Impatient, Mara advanced. The irritation would make his face swell, make him unrecognizable. She pushed her arm out and his hand snapped up and closed around her wrist.

Her eyes widened, her grip on the leaves loosened. 

Touch threw everything into overdrive. 

No.

The leaves floated down ever so slowly. 

“Mara,” Skywalker said, a note of trepidation sneaking up under her name, “you--”

She barely heard him, because that feeling, that narrowing of her senses to where his hand clasped her wrist -- she knew that, knew it as a prologue to a rush building even now, years after she’d first felt it. It didn’t matter that underneath it her spine locked, dread skittering down, or rather, it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t get away from it. Right now.

The palace companion had been normal. 

Skywalker wasn’t.

So Mara turned her wrist, breaking his hold, and leapt back. Skywalker stepped forward, saying something, but all Mara heard was the thump of her blood in her ears. She was leaving. Leaving this Force damned forest, leaving her strung-out state, the reckoning of terrible memories, and even worse choices. 

She should have killed him. But now she had to leave. Leave it all. Choose herself. Only herself. That’s when she went wrong. She should have always chosen herself.

Mara forced herself into a run, branches scratching at her. She stumbled a couple of times, but didn’t permit herself to stop. It wouldn’t happen to her again. Her master had told her it wouldn’t. Never again.

Her foot stubbed something and she went tumbling. 

Click.

White armored boots floated in her vision. Her eyes tracked up to take in the stormtrooper pointing his E-11 at her.

“Hands up.”

Thrawn’s men, she thought. One desperate gamble was open to her as she brought her hands behind her head. In her peripheral vision she saw movement. Maybe they were chasing Skywalker. 

“You’re looking for Luke Skywalker, right?” she told them unthinkingly. “He’s got my blaster. Back there.”

The stormtrooper snorted at her as a group of three others brought Skywalker forward.

“Nice try.” The stormtrooper raised his chin to his squad mates. “Take them both in.”

The stormtroopers dragged them forward, and Mara should have known where they were being taken, or at least have a guess. Her brain couldn't focus on that, too busy working at a fevered pace weaving story after story as she dug her heels in, pulling against the stormtroopers’ bruising hold, pleading to the men beside her, “I need to talk to Karrde. You need to talk to Karrde.” She brazenly lied, “We’ve cooperated and will continue cooperating.” She threatened, “You don’t know how much influence Talon Karrde has on Myrkr. Your admiral needs him.” 

Her words all collapsed into senselessness before long, but the worst part was that she couldn’t make herself stop.

The shakes lodged in her spine, her coordination growing clumsier, that terrifying feeling of restlessness like an rash on her skin. Why couldn't it be the stim pills? 

And it only got worse -- the damp forest scent surrounding her carrying hints of something else. _Skywalker’s_ scent. That’s what she’d caught before and it made her insides clench painfully. A low drumbeat of an impulse to run _to_ him. A wash of heat in her belly spread down, soaking her undergarments. Her breath caught in her throat as she grew cold. No. No.

Mara didn’t know how long she’d been in the throes of the heat cycle, but it now gathered like the tide, pulling away from shore so it could crash forward and drown her. She babbled, hoping something would make them let her go so she could run.

A rational part of her knew everything was already lost. Too late. The world was way too bright, too loud, her tunic scratchy and awful on her skin. Or had it been like this before? For how long? She had already been set on Skywalker in a way she hadn’t been before. Had it been like this before? She scrabbled for some sort of explanation.

She wanted to run.

She wanted to run away.

She wanted to run towards Skywalker, and smell him, bite him, crash her body into his. Smell _like_ him.

She _needed_ to run away.

Skywalker was silent a few paces away, flanked by two stormtroopers. The one time her eyes accidentally met his, his panicked expression almost made her stop her babbling. But no, if anything, more inconsequential gibberish continued to fall from her lips.

“Is she high?” She dimly heard one of the stormtroopers ask another. “What's wrong with her?”

“I don’t kn--” The rest of the remark was a shout as Skywalker did something, Mara didn’t know what, but the stormtroopers’ attention was on him. The grip on her shoulders lessened in the flurry of movement. 

Mara yanked herself away.

This was her chance, but she was having trouble thinking even a minute or two ahead of that itch just under her skin. She had no set destination, no clear map of where she should turn, or where she was going. All she knew was to run. Maybe run away from her lightheadedness, from her rapid breaths, from the thunder of her pulse in her ears. The sun was too bright. She was crashing. She knew she was crashing.

She knew the heat was crashing onto her, too.

Back to myself. Her foot landed on uneven ground. Back to myself. 

The yelling of the stormtroopers was too loud.

She careened forward and hit the ground, rose to a crouching position, the world seeming too far. A stormtrooper yanked her up and forward, her feet dragging. He screamed something that made no sense and she swayed on her feet. He smelled wrong. The man holding her smelled wrong. It didn't help, but the world has already faded out.

\--

Mara woke up in darkness. She sighed and let her head loll forward before she felt around her. Her hands immediately skidded over the warmth of skin. She sank her face into it, soothed by the musky scent of sweat and grass, familiar. Good. This was good.

“Mara.” Her name? Her name. It was a moan she’d felt as much as heard. 

Skywalker, her mind provided hazily. His arms encircled her, his legs underneath her. Something was wrong, but that feeling got muted as she was compelled to draw even closer. Tremors ran through the arms around her, calloused fingers flexing at her waist. 

“Mara.” A gasp now. “I-I couldn’t...I...We need -- you need to get dressed.”

Dressed. It took a couple of seconds for the memory of clothing to well up, scratchy fabric on too-sensitive skin. 

Without it was better.

She didn’t mind the dark either, not when she was here, this close. Mara squirmed to get even closer, making a low noise at the damp slide of her chest against his. Her skin prickled, her insides clenching, an edged feeling sparking up, piercing her into movement. She rose up on her knees. Fluid gushed down her thigh. Mara stopped.

Skywalker made a low sound between a whimper and a whine. “I-I- oh.” He continued in a torrent, nothing Mara paid attention to.

She oriented herself, registered tenderness between her legs, reached a hand to feel there, her hand palming over slick. For a split second she was arrested by a trickle of unease, but the feeling vanished when she lifted her hand to her face with a sniff, scenting him...her. This was good too. But it wouldn't take without her. She still wanted to cover herself with that scent, cover him with it, and swiped her wet hand across his skin. His chest? 

He gasped, whatever he’d been saying lost as he shifted slightly, disconcertingly away. Mara scooted further forward on him, inching her hand down to feel the dip of his navel, the ripple of sleek muscle under her sticky hand. His belly.

Skywalker’s hands were now at her hips, gripping hard enough to bruise. He released, then tightened his hold again with spasmic cadence. Mara shifted jerkily, feeling his cock dragging wetly down her hip. Her muscles seized, an agonizing clench on nothing that blared want like a shock to her system, forcing a whimper from her throat--an impetus to move, search, finish this. 

“It'd stop. I thought. At least.” He was still speaking, his breathing harsh against her temple, voice dissonant. He took a deep breath, a shudder passing through him that she felt reverberate between them. Mara squirmed, trying to position herself to take him in. “Hasn't. Hasn't. Oh.”

His hands fumbled against her upper arms, her waist as if uncertain whether to grasp or push away. One skittered across her wet thigh and Mara arched with a groan, her skin tingling at the touch. Skywalker jolted away, and she screeched her objection, her hands clutching at his sides. The aching feeling at the pit of her stomach, the too-tight feeling of her skin resolved in the fierce _stay_ her fingers dug into his ribs.

“Wait-wait,” Skywalker moaned jerking against her, his arm curled around her waist, his breath gusting across her cheek. Holding her, she thought and settled, but kept her grip at his sides. She didn’t release him, not even as his hands clasped hips again and moved her, not even when she felt the slick nudge of his cock by her thigh. Not when she spread her legs as he pulled her down. A rough, sobbed moan dragged out of him, mingled with hers, pleasure sharp at the hard slide of him within her. The sheer relief made her whole body lighten, felt like surfacing, and Mara let her head fall back, baring her throat. 

But she didn’t feel his teeth like she’d expected. Instead, his forehead was damp at her neck, and this was good too. She could stay like this for a while, feeling his shallow breaths, the rise of his chest, quick against hers. The edge hadn’t vanished but had lost form, that desperate rush melting away. Mara inhaled, their scent around them stronger, headier now. It hadn't been like this before.

Skywalker nuzzled along her shoulder, his hands sliding up from her hips to her waist. She drew her hand’s clawing hold from his sides, rolling her hips. He froze suddenly, muttered a something strained and thrust up. She moaned at the feeling, the stretch, pushing back against him, her arms wrapping around his neck, pleasure seeping out of every point of contact, from where his cock pushed inside her, to the graze of his chest against hers, to the his shoulders under her arms. Her lungs ached for air at the excess of sensation, the roll of her hips out of tempo with his thrusts.

Skywalker must have known because he slid her back on the floor, shoving inside her. A sharp, piercing pain burst at the middle of her back, but soon vanished like an afterthought. His thrusts were longer from this position, deeper. His hand groped along her thigh until it found a spot under her knee to hold her open. And there, Skywalker fucked her jerkily, jarring her, making her writhe and bear down, pulling inarticulate cries from her throat as she met his furious pace, their rhythm nothing short of frantic.

Something gave at her back, a lance of searing pain bubbling up, but the crash of his hips against hers, made it fade again as her spine stiffened, pleasure rippling through her in an ever-tightening loop. Mara could feel the squelch of liquid between their bodies, feel it running down her thighs as she writhed, hooking her heels to his calves.

A low pull coalesced low in her belly, her muscles tightening, and she clutched at Skywalker harder. The scratch of his teeth by her shoulder made her lose focus and arch her back. It wouldn't happen. Not yet. But she moaned from deep in her throat as he drove into her relentlessly. She plunging into her release even knowing something wasn’t right; they weren’t quite in sync yet. Over the rush of her blood, she heard him groan, felt him shuddering into her with a hoarse cry, a solid weight atop her, keeping her in place.

He raised himself slightly after. Mara placed a palm flat on his chest. His heart beat as if it were scurrying away, as if he wanted to. But he didn’t _seem_ about to from the way he drew back down, nosing along the hollow of her throat, and maybe that wasn’t him at all. Her mind felt too abuzz with pleasure to pursue the thought. Mara brought her hand up to his jaw, the scratchiness of his stubble against her palm.

“The way you smell,” he breathed, “I just…” His hand stroked across her trembling thigh, near where he was still hard inside her. Something twinged at the edge of her consciousness that it hadn't been that way before either. Not good. But the thought flickered out like dimming light as Skywalker's hand glided up and down her thigh, sweeping between them. Mara felt him rub at the wetness there, moving his hand up just over her curls, rubbing it into her lower belly. Mara stretched at the touch with a low noise, muscles lax. The edge wasn’t sharp here; she barely felt it at all. 

Skywalker stopped suddenly and yanked his hand away with a sharp breath. He shifted as if to wrench away, and Mara’s arms tightened around his back in warning. If he moved away from her, that desperation would be back -- and be worse, she knew. 

He didn’t move further, but neither did he relax, his muscles bunched under her hands as she spanned his shoulders in gliding touches.

“’m sorry.” Something scratched by her shoulder -- his stubble? “I’ve never...I tried...It doesn’t,” his voice cracked,“...doesn’t go away.”

She lifted her head and pressed her forehead against his chest. He smelled like her, like hers. Familiar. Like with like.

Blowing out a breath, Skywalker rolled to his back, scooping her up so she was on him. The movement meant he nearly slipped out. She caught a pained hiss before she quickly adjusted her hips. He took a ragged breath, and yet that tension remained. No good, an obstruction. Saying so would help, maybe. It took Mara a moment to find words.

“It...takes,” she managed.

“Takes what?”

The words were half sighed, her mouth having trouble around them. “Has to take.” 

“Are--are you okay? I mean -- ” A broken sound left him. “Mara. Mara?” His words came out in a rush. “Force, I’m so--”

She tightened her arms around him. “Shhh.”

He drew a shuddering breath. His hand was at the back of her head, at her nape, stroking up and down her arm. And finally her body felt too restless and she felt an uncontrollable impulse to move. She mouthed along his neck as she lifted her hips. Better. His hand lowered to between her shoulder blades, just under her nape. She briefly pressed back at the touch, an acknowledgement.

“Shh.” She lowered her forehead against his neck, breathing him in, impulsively flicking her tongue to lick from the side of his neck to his ear.

“It’s good,” she murmured, seeing if that helped. The salt on his skin flared on her tongue, and she lapped at him again. He thrust up, and she pushed back down, a rumbling noise lifting from him at the friction. He smelled too good not to latch her mouth to his neck, to bite down, his cry sending a shiver down her spine. She drew herself up and slammed down, thinking his tension gone, certain of it.

Skywalker reached up fingers catching on tendrils of her hair, but not stopping until they found a spot at the side of her neck. She shifted forward with a moan, made the fall of her hips harder. Something had unwound differently between them, the sharp euphoric note receding into something else deeper. Here and now, the squeeze of her body spread from her toes to her head. 

Skywalker mumbled something, his hands now bruisingly back at her hips, a useless gesture as his hips jerked sloppily, then went still. She wasn't likely to go anywhere. All her muscles locked as the world itself stopped there--here-- where Skywalker was inside her, neither of them in the under that all-consuming urgency. Not anymore. It felt like rest.

Alarm flickered in the distance of her mind, a flicker of pain at the horizon of her awareness, but it was too far and insignificant next to this loose well-being blanketing her, them. She slid down, rubbed her cheek against Skywalker’s chest, felt his breath by her temple, his hand at her nape, then between her shoulder blades. He made no move to withdraw, but then he couldn’t, her body had locked around him so it would hurt them both if he did try.

The edge was absolutely gone. 

Skywalker’s fingers skimmed her ear, drifted down her jaw and stroked there. “This?” he whispered. To her ears it felt like a croon that echoed with her pulse _this, this, this_.

She knew he meant the feeling. He was nuzzling her temple when she made an acknowledging sound, lulled by the scent of certainty between them, a bone-deep recognition. Different. 

Different when it’s like with like.

Skywalker's lips brushed against her jaw, her cheek. He briefly pressed them against hers -- like a furtive thing, it came to her. A stolen thing.

The feeling lessened gradually with the loosening of her muscles. Skywalker helped her ease away with a pained hiss, helping her settle into his side, his arm curled around her. She was tired, past tired, and with it came the realization that she was also hot, too hot, sticky with sweat and -- 

Mara scrambled off...her back was throbbing. Lightheadedness sprung from the quick motion. She was naked, her thighs slippery. Her breath caught in sudden vertigo. Losing her balance, she landed clumsily on her side. Her back continued its throb as her thoughts whirled in increasing chaos.

“Mara! You okay?” Skywalker’s words slurred together, even through his alarm. She heard a small frantic sound, another, before she realized they were coming from her. Icy dread shot through her as she lifted herself up to a crouch, liquid between her thighs. She--

“Hey, it’s okay. It's okay.”

No. Her stomach heaved. Her back pounded, her legs were still shaking, she was--sore. She could smell sex on herself. All around her. Smelled _Skywalker_ on her. All over her. And she was back in her room at the palace, sore and sticky again, remembering being curled up around some unknown man whose resignation was pouring--

No no no.

“It's o--” 

Semen, she thinks. That's what's on her thighs. Mara bent down and retched.

“My clothes,” she asked in a cracked whisper, after she'd wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Her skin felt itchy and tacky where the mess had dried and she couldn’t think about it, but she couldn’t _not_ think about it. She’d been dressed. Did he undress her or did she --? 

It doesn’t matter. Mara took breath after breath, forced herself to swallow bile as she croaked, “I-I need my clothes. I need -- I need my clothes now.”

“Yes, yes,” Skywalker said quickly. “Here -- they’re right here. I'm going to slide them to your left and -- here."

Mara felt for her tunic and her underclothes, that sick feeling still in her stomach. It was revolting. She was. She decided to forgo the wrap to use it to wipe at her thighs, her belly, the impossibility of getting everything off making her breath catch. She couldn’t think about it. She couldn’t. She won’t.

“Mara,” Skywalker said thickly. “I--”

“No!” she interrupted, raising her voice. "No." She methodically put the rest of her garments on with fumbling hands. Like last time -- No.

How much time had passed? She forced her brain back to what happened before... everything else. Her mind flashed, imagining stormtroopers entering to find the grotesque scene. Finding Skywalker rutting against her, and her -- No.

Like an animal.

At least her voice sounded more even when she pushed out, “No one checked on us?” 

“I don't -- no,” Skywalker stammered. She heard him scrounging around -- for his own clothes, probably. “You -- you fell and fainted. They brought us here and left us. It was -- I --” 

“I know what it was,” Mara snapped. Would have been better or worse. Better or worse? Better or worse? Better or worse? Betterorworsebetterorworse. Stop. She rubbed at her face. Why was it fucking dark? 

“I don’t know,” Skywalker replied. Mara swallowed. Had she said that out loud? “It was hazy -- still is. I don’t know what time it is exactly.”

Mara slid her hand down the wall. Light switch had to be here somewhere. It didn’t make sense for there to be an elaborate interrogation room with only outside controls in such a distant outpost. She just had to find the blasted switch.

"Or why -- why they left us. Maybe they didn’t expect us in this direction or maybe they were called in to deal with something else...”

The cell couldn’t be that big either. As she felt for the switch, Mara couldn’t help wondering if Skywalker had done something to the stormtroopers But he didn't have the Force. Obviously. There’d been at least five stormtroopers. He couldn’t have. Not as heatsick as he’d been.

“They could have been busy with something,” he finished.

Finally she came to a switch, and flipped. Her eyes fell shut, the illumination stabbing into them. 

It should be funny, she thought, blinking at the brightness as her stomach continued its roil. Being so heatsick you couldn’t even think to turn on the light. She bit the inside of her cheek, tasting blood. An animal in heat. Only animals have heat cycles. The thought looped around her head. Only animals. Only animals.

The unmistakable sound of blaster fire outside.

She straightened up. Okay, something was going on outside. Some attack. She pulled her thoughts toward it, trying not to look directly at Skywalker. He’d gotten himself back into his clothes. Her eyes fell on the gash at his forehead, the new reddened area around his eye and cheekbone. 

“When I tried to distract the stormtroopers,” he explained, catching her look. He cleared his throat. “Got a close look at a rifle.”

That must have been when she’d run and heard a scuffle behind her. The blaster fire had preoccupied her. _Tried to distract them._

Why?

More blaster fire rang through the air at a distance.

“What's going on outside?” She lifted her head, daring to hope. Maybe Karrde had given up on his own gambit. She scanned the cell it wasn’t even a cell really, it looked like some sort of storage area, not too different from the ones at Karrde’s compound. Thrawn’s men clearly hadn’t had much time to set up.

Should Karrde tangle with a Grand Admiral? The thought made her uneasy. And why had Skywalker tried to distract the stormtroopers? Her thoughts continued spinning in directions they shouldn't. She’d been telling Skywalker how much she wanted him dead. Maybe he took a chance with the stormtroopers, counting on her to leave him behind? That had to be it. 

And it didn't even matter. There was no reason to keep coming back to it.

”Mara.”

She lifted a hand for silence. Voices. She could make out voices distantly. Definitely not within the outpost.

And still her mind clung to useless questions like a hawkbat with a bone. She’d been heatsick. There was no way Skywalker wouldn’t have known. So he had to have known she was susceptible. Since when -- 

She didn’t want to think of this. None of it.

“Mara.” Skywalker asked from behind her in a choked voice. “How's-how’s your back?”

Hurt like hell. She made herself examine the panel that locked the door. It was rudimentary enough, she could pick the door. She would pick the door. That’s what she’d do now. She’d find out what was going on outside. “Shut up.”

“I think...I made it worse.” She made the mistake of looking back, past him to the duracrete floor. Bloody streaks glistened across it, and a puddle-- she looked away in a flash, tamping on another heave of her stomach. Disgusting. “I -- I wasn’t --”

“Shut up,” she whispered, eyes back on the panel. “Just shut the fuck up.”

“I'm so sorry -- I -- I’ve never been through--”

“I don't care.” She looked through her jumpsuit for her lockpick. If she was lucky, no one had frisked her well enough to find them. She was due some luck, and she set to work the lockpick through the panel's innards until, finally, the door hissed open.

More blaster fire. Definitely from outside and closer. She could hear the whir of speeders too. 

Mara cautiously crossed the threshold to the control room. The main area wasn’t much either, a control panel on one side and view screens on the front wall, benches. Displays. Maybe if she got the displays on --

But her thoughts kept spiraling. Everyone who'd said she was a freak when she was young, everyone who couldn’t believe she'd call something she had no way of knowing on an unexplainable hunch - they had been wrong, all of them. From those who'd wanted to cash in on it to those who'd feared her. It’d been stress. Coincidence. She wasn’t. Her master was dead.

Stop, she told herself flipping on the displays with clumsy hands. The wrong tech lit up and she cursed. Stop. I don’t have time for this.

“Mara,” Skywalker began with quiet urgency. “There's nothing, nothing that justifies I -- I --I know no apology is enough. I --”

She froze and turned slowly to look at him, that swelling red at the corner of his eye, his pupils at high tide. His words degenerated into a cacophony of sounds as he brought a hand up in a truncated gesture.

It hadn't mattered -- all of what he’d taken from her hadn’t mattered because she’d been mindless, and she wasn’t this. It’d been her master’s power. A side effect. It hadn’t been her, it’d been a price she paid, and it wouldn’t happen anymore, because she controlled it, her master had controlled it -- 

“I’m not what you think I am,” she formed the words through dry lips, interrupting whatever nonsense he’d been saying. “I’m not. I _had_ the Force, but I don’t. I’m human. I don’t know what you are.” Unregulated issue. _Contagion_ , she thought, and wanted to rend her own skin. Her voice became a shaky whisper, “You sick freak. Get the fuck away from me.” 

He paled and took several steps back, not saying anything more.

There was no one within the main area, but they could hear a flurry of voices outside, more blaster fire. Mara scanned around, located her blaster and power pack on top of a nearby desk. 

By the time she’d gotten her holster back on, Skywalker had found his droid, outfitted with a restraining bolt, in some corner supply closet. He’d kneeled in front of it to pry the bolt off.

Mara rechecked the holster, though she knew she’d attached it securely, tested the draw. The blaster felt solid and familiar in her hands..

Skywalker was still working with the restraining bolt. She could just shoot him now. A matter of lifting it up, aiming, and pulling the trigger. Her eyes fell on Skywalker’s shoulders. His back was to her. 

That had never stopped her when she’d had justice on her side. 

Now, more than ever, she had no reason not to kill him. Karrde was no longer enough. Not after they’d been apprehended, she knew. She could explain. 

No. She wouldn’t even have to.

Skywalker turned his head, staring at her, and there was no worry or even question in his eyes, only a patient wait.

For what? 

Mara visualized leveling the blaster; she could feel the trigger yield under the pull of her finger, feel the bump of the recoil, hear the thud of the body on the ground. Her hands tightened on the holdout.

The shooting and yelling outside stopped, but Skywalker didn’t move, and his expression didn’t change. 

If she killed Skywalker, she’d be tying up a loose end in more ways than one. She could make certain their paths would never cross again. The only thing Force sensitives bred was chaos. There was no one to regulate them anymore. Force only knew what she could spare the universe. Look at today. Look at right now.

The universe had so few certainties.

Voices outside grew closer. “Make sure their radios are down!”

Do it, she told herself. You owe it to yourself. To your master. After all that Skywalker took from you.

Justice was a human’s right. A human's privilege. A human's duty.

Skywalker went back to his droid with a slow, deliberate turn. The droid beeped something at him but he didn’t answer. It beeped again. “I think you’re all set,” he told it in a tight voice.

This is the moment, Mara thought, the moment that she’ll think about in a day, in a month, in a year. 

The main door opened and a group rushed in, blasters in hand. She heard Chin and Aves’ voices. Karrde’s people. They rushed to her, talking a mile a minute, pulling at her despite her grimacing as they jostled her back, screaming at her to _go go go!_

Off the corner of her eye, she saw two other men dart towards Skywalker. 

Mara let herself be pushed out, past the scattered bodies of the stormtroopers, and shoved into the first of two waiting airspeeders. She felt the jolt as the speeder rose, and tried not to look at the blood under her fingernails.

\--

“How are you feeling?” Karrde asked.

Mara raised her head from where she’d been cleaning her blaster. From his people she knew Karrde had been busy working out the logistics of their exit from Myrkr. She supposed the medical personnel had let him know she was finally cleared. This was the first time she’d been in her quarters in more than a week, about the second time she’d seen Karrde since Aves and Chin and the rest of Karrde’s men brought her back. Since he deliberately went against Thrawn. For her.

While he looked the same as always, Mara spied some tension in Karrde’s demeanor, tension at the corner of his lips. This was costing him. Would keep costing him.

“Good,” she replied. “Normal. The bacta did the trick on my back.” No trace remained from the vronskr’s wound. Her ankle was completely healed. She asked for more tests of course, but only after making sure they’d be completely confidential.

Karrde looked as if he expected something more, but it was for only a second before he continued, “We’ve started lifting our people and supplies. There’s no telling when Grand Admiral Thrawn will find out about what happened here, but my guess is soon. We want to be done by then. I want you packed up and at the _Wild Karrde_ to supervise the most important supplies. I sent you the list. I’ll coordinate a bit longer down here until the second group packs up and then join you there.”

“All right.” And not a moment too soon; she would be happy if she never saw Myrkr again.

Mara quickly finished assembling the blaster and stood. Karrde was at the door when she blurted out, “I -- I appreciate you sending Aves and Chin and them,” she nodded vaguely to the people outside, “I don’t think I thanked you.”

She’d done some thinking over the past few days. Not that she had wanted to, but her mind kept cycling to the stormtroopers bursting in and seeing --

She always stopped herself there, but it was enough. It did make a difference. 

“No need,” Karrde brushed her off. “You know we never leave anyone behind. Take Skipray Five.”

She nodded. In the end she’d been stupid and unguarded. It could have been worse. It wouldn’t happen again. She’d make sure of it. 

“I’ll go get my things,” she told him.

Mara made short work of loading her luggage into the Skipray, and an hour later was departing from one of the busy base hangars, her position within the organization allowing her to lift off as soon as the Skipray was clear. Clearing the atmosphere, it wasn’t too long before the blueish white planet was behind her, and the _Wild Karrde_ grew larger and larger in her viewscreen.

She didn’t notice at first, focusing on her nav, but as she neared the ship, the very space around her suddenly felt alive. She hadn’t felt like that in a long time. 

That feeling centered around the _Wild Karrde_ \-- the beings there. Mara shook her head to clear it. No. She hadn’t felt that in more than a year. Not since she’d arrived at Varonat two years ago. Maybe once in Phorliss. Occasionally she’d _thought_ she felt it. Like a few weeks ago, but it'd only been a hunch.

She’d been wrong. It’d only been a passing thing. It was a passing thing now. Her master was dead. She wasn't what she'd once been.

Mara opened a comm channel. “Skipray Five to _Wild Karrde_ requesting permission to land.”

**Author's Note:**

> Because I like to show my work, my alternate universe idea re Force sensitives are Different came from several bits I often return to in DFR:
> 
>  
> 
> _“Yes, sir,” Mara said. Her tangle of emotions was starting to dissolve now, leaving a mixture of anger and profound embarrassment in its wake. She’d done it again. Listened to her inner feelings—tried to do things she knew full well she couldn’t do—and in the process had once again wound up clutching the sharp end of the bayonet._
> 
>  
> 
> _So it was back. She’d hoped fervently that her locating of Skywalker’s X-wing out in deep space had been an isolated event. A fluke, more his doing than hers._  
>  _But no. It was all coming back, as it had so many times before in the past five years. The hunches and sensory flickers, the urges and the compulsions._
> 
>  
> 
> _Mara turned away. So that was how it was going to be this time. Previous employers had reacted to her strange hunches with fear, or anger, or simple bald-faced hatred. Karrde, apparently, was going to go for polite exploitation._
> 
> And also:
> 
>  
> 
> _“The gates of hell you did,” Mara snapped back. “You planned to use me like this right from the start.”_  
>  _“And it got us what we wanted,” the red-eyed freak said smoothly. “That’s all that matters.”_
> 
>  
> 
> This is yet another instance of hugging canon tight until I choke it to do my own thing. Cheers!


End file.
